Our names are rife with meaning, stories we claim and others we discard. Listen to this group of "audio selfies," including one with Parker Palmer, exploring how our identity is formed by the names we're given, the ones we take, and the ones we long for but never quite materialize.

The stories of a person, a family, a culture, a country hold and bind us in ways that are potentially fruitful or harmful. They also give us an identity. A meditation on who we are, how we become, and the stories we tell ourselves along the way.

We acquire and we accumulate. But why? What is the story we're trying to tell through the possessions we own. Our columnist Courtney Martin considers the multiple philosophies of ownership — and points toward that which is truly valuable.

How do we come to truly "know" ourselves? Through a host of childhood memories, and using a George Oppen poem as her guide, a health practitioner suggests a starting place: "Become intimate with discomfort. Pull it closer. Mend nothing first."

An inspirational profile of one of those modern-day heroes, SAS, a doctor whose key insights turned the tide of the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone — an exemplar of quiet commitment and unending courage who saved thousands of lives by bridging worlds.